The Lake

Starred review from May 22, 2017
At the outset of the Hammers’ searing fourth thriller featuring Det. Supt. Konrad Simonsen (after 2016’s The Vanished), sex trafficker Benedikte Lerche-Larsen and her confederate, illiterate hit man Henrik Krag, drive into the country north of Copenhagen with a frightened passenger in their car—a young Nigerian brothel worker known as Jessica, who has been disobedient. Jessica knows that if she tries to flee, she can expect no help from the Danish police, who will simply send her back to Nigeria. They stop at an isolated cabin, where Krag administers a torture beating that goes too far. The killers dispose of Jessica’s body, weighted with a granite block, in a nearby lake. Six months later, a hunting dog at the lake retrieves a skull, and soon Simonsen and his team are on the trail of a prostitution ring that preys on kidnapped African teenagers, ostensibly offering jobs as au pairs in Danish households. The Hammers (a brother-sister writing team) expose the moral turpitude of a country lacking a national law that criminalizes the buying of sex. Agent: Sofie Voller, Gyldendal (Denmark).

May 15, 2017
The fourth of the Hammer siblings' accounts of Danish skulduggery follows a human trafficking ring to its untidy but logical end.Identifying the skeletal remains of a young woman killed six months ago, her body dumped in a lake in Hanehoved Forest, is obviously going to be quite a challenge for Detective Superintendent Konrad "Simon" Simonsen (The Vanished, 2016, etc.) and his colleagues in the Copenhagen Homicide Department. It will take months before their painstaking, brick-by-brick investigation reveals what the reader has known all along: the dead woman, an uncooperative Nigerian teenager who'd been smuggled into Denmark and forced into prostitution, was accidentally killed in the middle of a punishment administered by Henrik Krag, a newcomer to this kind of work, while his more experienced partner, Jan Podowski, and Benedikte Lerche-Larsen, the boss's daughter, looked on. Simon and his crew deferentially interview Adam Blixen-Agerskjold, the chamberlain and gentleman farmer who owns the forest, and his lady, Lenette, before they develop a more serious interest in estate bailiff Frode Otto, whose four-year-old conviction for assault makes him a much more likely prospect. And indeed Otto, questioned by the police, smilingly confesses to three additional rapes on which the statute of limitations has run out. While Simon and company are running down unpromising leads, the tale keeps turning to Benedikte's hate/hate relationship with her father, poker and prostitution king Svend Lerche, and his helpmeet, Karina Larsen--who want to keep their daughter on a short leash even as they groom her to take over the family business--and her unlikely romance with Henrik Krag, which promises to be equally dysfunctional. The Hammers, who put the procedure in procedural, keep the pot simmering at such a low temperature you'll wonder if they've mistaken the fridge for the stovetop. The stubborn lack of momentum makes this one a natural for travelers on endless flights.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 15, 2017
This is the fourth Copenhagen detective Konrad Simonsen thriller (after The Vanished, 2016) from Danish sister and brother Lotte and Sren Hammer. Simonsen is as brilliant yet fallible as ever in a piece of Nordic noir that will leave readers chilled to the bone, even though it is set in spring and the thaw is on. Female remains are found by a hunting dog at a lake in a forest north of the city. The investigation runs head-on into the sex-trafficking underworld and its upper-class connections. The Lake scores highly as both a police procedural and an enthralling, sometimes appalling study of depravity and heartlessness. The Hammers' coppers are good and genuine people, in sharp contrast to the baser elements that lurk in the corners of Danish society. The ending is left somewhat open for the continued pursuit of one of the most deplorable characters, although many readers are likely to feel that this is one psycho we don't need to hear from again. Recommended for fans of Jussi Adler-Olsen, Stefan Ahnhem, Jo Nesb, and, of course, Henning Mankell.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)